Generally, a mobile station makes a request for information to a base station and the base station provides a corresponding information to the mobile station in a wireless communication system. In particular, many communication systems up to now have been developed centering on a downlink.
Yet, this structure changes in a machine-to-machine (hereinafter abbreviate M2M) communication network. In particular, the mobile station becomes a main agent providing an information and the base station makes a request for the information instead in the M2M communication network.
Hence, in case of a general wireless communication, the mobile station discovers a nearby network when the mobile station initially operates and selects a network to access according to a result of the discovered network. Yet, in case of an M2M communication, since a machine is unable to directly select a network, it should be controlled by a base station designated in advance or a network.
Yet, the aforementioned method of discovering and selecting a network performed by the mobile station in the M2M communication may have a problem as follows.
First of all, since the mobile station has to repeatedly perform a discovery process in all channels until a prescribed network is found, power consumption is considerable.
Secondly, the M2M communication network is assumed to have a huge number of mobile stations. Since many management frames should be sent for each of the mobile stations to perform a search and selection for a network, it may cause a waste of radio resource.
Thirdly, in case that the mobile station performs a search and selection for a network, a network management problem may occur since there exists a chance that the mobile station does not receive correctly a data or a control command to be transmitted by the base station.